U.S. Suspends Tariff Penalty Against Japan

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 305, 27 December 1939, Page 2

U.S. Suspends Tariff Penalty Against Japan

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) NEW YORK, Dec. 24. A Washington message says that the Commissioner of Customs to-day confirmed that the United States was invoking President Grant’s 1872 Proclamation and suspending the 10 per cent penalty tariff against Japan. It is believed that President Roosevelt, if he wished, could revoke the proclamation terminating the Japanese-American trade treaty. This report follows an indication from Tokio that trade relations between Japan and America are to continue unimpeded after January, when the trade treaty is due to expire. America, it will be remembered, gave notice some months ago that she would revoke the treaty in January as a penalty for Japan's disregard of American interests in China. The Japanese Domei News Agency said to-day that the Foreign Office was instructing its Ambassador at Washington to seek an early appointment with the American Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, to discuss an agreement to replace the expiring commercial treaty. The Japanese Foreign Minister, Admiral Nomura, is reported to be “most favourably impressed” with the United States’s failure to impose the tariff penalty. The Shanghai correspondent of the New York Times, Mr Abend, says that American and other third-Power interests in China are vastly relieved that Washington advices failed fully to confirm optimistic Japanese statements indicating that the United States was waiving all objections to the “new order in East Asia.” The potency of the United States of America's trade weapon against Japan is evidenced by the fact that the reopening of the Yangtse river to foreign ships is promised in spite of the opposition of the most radical wing of the Japanese Army. It is realised that General Abe’s Cabinet took its life in it s hands in making this promise, only after the saner militarists and a majority of the navy, industrialists and financiers had analysed the situation and seen how severance of trade between the United States of America and Japan would paralyse Japan’s national economy and military efforts.